Self-Care for Empaths

by Tanya Carroll Richardson

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  INTRODUCTION

  When a friend tells you over coffee about her recent breakup and starts crying, do you tear up, too—maybe even before she does? When your son gets accepted to his dream college, does your heart chakra (an energy center in your chest) expand, making your energy body buzz and hum? If you find yourself particularly susceptible to absorbing the energy and emotions around you, you might be an empath. Empaths have hyper-perceptive nervous and energetic systems that allow them to feel the energies and emotions of others as if they were their own.

  Empaths aren’t only capable of feeling more from those in their intimate circle and immediate vicinity, like friends, family members, and coworkers, however—they can also be affected by global energy or something happening to a person, animal, or place they have only read about in the news. An empath can even sense things happening when they haven’t been told anything at all!

  It’s a deeply connecting experience to be able to feel more of the emotions and energies in the room or even the world. But feeling so much can also be taxing. You might tire easily, find your mind filled with ongoing chatter, or feel emotionally drained.

  The self-care activities in this book are specially designed to help you overcome these challenges so you can enjoy the blessing of your magical empath nature. Working as a professional intuitive, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know thousands of empaths from all over the globe and all walks of life. From their experiences and my own, I’ve cultivated one hundred empath-specific self-care tools to help you enjoy and engage with the world around you in a more nourishing, empowered way. The exercises, quizzes, and rituals in this book will help you:

  • Stay grounded by identifying issues that typically frazzle, drain, and overwhelm most empaths.

  • Avoid burnout by utilizing your powerful sixth sense to mindfully tune in or out of others.

  • Remain centered in your own energy instead of trying to manage another person’s emotional experience.

  • Retreat and recover to rebalance your sensitive system and emerge refreshed and energized.

  • Support your physical body to develop more energetic and emotional stamina so life feels magical, meaningful, and joyful.

  • Work with the energy of spaces to create an empath sanctuary environment.

  When you focus on your self-care with these ideas (and dozens more), you can better manage your sensitivity so that, depending on the situation, you can set boundaries with people and collective energy or open up to feel in to people and situations. You’ll learn how to create, identify, manage, and harness energy, as well as how to practice techniques that support your sensitive nervous and energetic systems every day. This book encourages you to create healthier relationships with others, advocate for yourself, process your emotions, and make the most of your ability. With practice and mindfulness, you can learn to turn the volume up or down on your sensitivity, and regularly re-ground back in to your own energy or come home to yourself.

  Feeling more—from everything and everyone—can greatly enhance your human experience. Being an empath is a magical way to travel through life, and the tools in this book will help enrich your own empath journey, making it more fun and more fulfilling. Keep your unique body, mind, and spirit balanced, healthy, and happy with Self-Care for Empaths!

  CHAPTER 1 Understand Your Empath Nature

  Think of being an empath as having a more open or porous emotional and energetic system. For example, the person sitting at work next to you might be naturally wired to be attuned to their own energies and emotions, but you as an empath are wired to pick up on your energies and emotions and those of others around you. So the micromanager at work may not bother your coworker but might really get under your empath skin. That’s because the anxious energy of this micromanager can sometimes register in your own system (we’ll address how to better protect against that throughout this book).

  Or you could be invited to the wedding of someone you really don’t know well and still feel incredibly touched as the couple is toasted by loved ones, dances around the room, and gazes at each other adoringly. Someone else at the wedding might marvel at how deeply this is affecting or moving you, since you barely know the couple. Your strong emotional reaction occurs because you are able to feel the couple’s joy and tenderness as if it were your own. That’s just part of being an empath.

  In this first chapter, we’ll explore your empath nature so you can better understand this fascinating, layered aspect of yourself and why you need special self-care tools to maintain harmony and balance in your life.

  WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN EMPATH

  Empaths have a few key qualities in common. To determine if you might be an empath or identify which empath qualities are most prominent in you, ask yourself the following questions.

  • Do I sometimes feel overflowing with emotion, like bursting with excitement when something great happens in my life or deeply sad for a friend who is going through a hard time? (Empaths not only feel a lot; they can feel things deeply and intensely.)

  • Do I experience other people’s energies and emotions so intimately that it’s as if other people’s energies and emotions are my own? (This is the hallmark trait of an empath.)

  • Can I often sense what is really going on with someone emotionally, whether they share this verbally/with facial expressions or not? (When someone is trying to conceal or mask their own emotions, empaths can usually tell quickly what the real emotional story is going on underneath.)

  • Am I very moved by the energy of spaces? (Empaths can feel at home and comfortable—or feel very much not at home and uncomfortable—in a certain house or park or office. Empaths also understand that spaces have collective energy that has built up over time.)

  • Do people tend to want to open up and share their emotional experience with me? (Just being around an empath’s energy has the ability to make others get in touch with and want to process their own emotional experiences.)

  • Can I feel the energy in plants, trees, bodies of water, and crystals? (Empaths are very sensitive to energy and naturally understand that it resides in everything.)

  • Do I get physical cues about energy and emotions, such as chills when someone shares something that resonates with me or brief nausea when someone near me is feeling sick? (Some empaths are so sensitive they can feel, temporarily, the physical states of other people.)

  • Am I afraid I will get overwhelmed by the energies and emotions of others? (Empaths sometimes feel the need to hide out as a way to cope with emotional and energetic overwhelm.)

  • Have parents or partners accused me of being too sensitive or too emotional? (If so, know that you don’t need to feel shame for being sensitive to energy or feeling emotions deeply—whether you’re an empath or not.)

  • Am I incredibly moved by the stories of animals and people I read about in books, hear about in the news, or see in the movies? (Empaths have an energetic heart that is easily touched by others, even fictional characters or people and animals they have never met.)

  • Is it sometimes difficult for me to be assertive and get my needs met if standing up for what I want will cause uncomfortable emotions in someone else? (Since empaths easily absorb other people’s energies and
emotions, they can fall into people-pleasing tendencies.)

  • Do I sometimes feel as if I lose myself in romantic relationships, or have a little piece of my heart taken away when someone leaves my life? (Empaths can bond intensely and quickly with people and sometimes struggle with codependency.)

  • Do I cry easily, like when I am moved by something I see on television or when someone else I know is upset or happy? (Empaths are easily moved by things outside of themselves, which can bring on the waterworks.)

  • Does life seem full of wonder to me, and do I get great meaning out of small moments that others might miss or feel are insignificant? (Because empaths pick up easily on subtle stimuli, they can live passionately and feel big feels from “small” experiences.)

  If you answered yes to many of these questions, you are probably an empath. Keep in mind each empath will be somewhat unique in the way they experience this phenomenon, and that you might amass more experiences over time. You could initially answer no to some of these questions but then say yes several years later. Whether you have been having these empath experiences since you were a young child or the empath in you has only more recently awakened, you’ll find support in this book.

  FINDING YOUR PLACE IN THE WORLD

  Being an empath is simply the way you were set up to experience life: by feeling and sensing more. It’s not necessarily good or bad, right or wrong—just a little different!

  Your power comes by realizing that your empathic ability is simply part of how your internal GPS is naturally wired to navigate life.

  Empaths are often subject to generalizations and myths that falsely define them. For example, your sensitivity does not make you weak or too emotional, nor does it hold you back from experiencing the larger world—empaths can have any type of profession, for example. On the other hand, being an empath doesn’t mean that you are inherently wiser, more enlightened, more gifted, or more worthy than anyone else.

  While empaths may need to be more mindful of the amounts and types of energies and emotions they expose themselves to, being an empath is not an excuse to opt out of the more challenging emotional and energetic situations in life. Life is full of ups and downs, and if you opt out of the tougher parts to protect your sensitive system, you will unfortunately also miss out on the rewarding experiences too.

  If you ever feel you just can’t handle life, please don’t judge yourself. That’s a sign you need more support. Getting more support when you need it is a crucial part of healthy self-care. We all need help getting through this life, whether we are an empath or not! You might turn to the assistance of loved ones, trusted colleagues, and/or healthcare professionals in addition to the exercises in this book. Be sure to practice radical self-love too (we’ll work on that in an exercise later on).

  THE FOUR MAIN PSYCHIC PATHWAYS

  To better understand yourself as an empath, it helps to learn how the four main psychic pathways—clairaudience, or hearing intuitive guidance; claircognizance, or knowing intuitive guidance; clairvoyance, or seeing intuitive guidance; and clairsentience, or feeling intuitive guidance—operate in your everyday life. When you understand your own system, you’ll know how to better nurture it, and part of an empath’s system is a strong intuition, or sixth sense. Your intuition, which gives you guidance via the four main psychic pathways, helps you navigate the world—and it can also help you navigate yourself. Among other things, your intuition will give you guidance about how to better take care of yourself, or alert you to self-care issues that need your attention. While I use all four “clairs” in sessions with clients, I also rely on them in my personal life for compassionate, comprehensive self-care.

  These terms—the four “clairs”—might seem fancy, but they can be explained in simple language. For example, all empaths are naturally strong in the clairsentience, or feeling, psychic pathway. Clairsentience is that feeling you get when a major purchase, like a home, is a good one or meant for you—perhaps you sense warm, inviting, positive energy around this home, or feel unexplainably at home when you walk through the door for the first time with a real estate agent. Or it could be the uncomfortable, something-is-off vibe you get while interviewing at a new company. This type of energetic or emotional impression is naturally quite developed for most empaths. While it may not be something we can see with the naked eye, for empaths, energy and vibes are things we can feel very clearly, and should never discount.

  Empaths can easily access this clairsentient psychic pathway. But you might be less familiar with the other three psychic pathways. Like with any other skill set, the more you practice and use these pathways, the more adept you may become at them. Keep in mind that clairaudience and clairvoyance are the rarer psychic pathways to have open, yet you don’t need to be able to access those to have rockstar intuition.

  • Clairaudience: Hearing intuitive guidance as a voice in your head that is not your own. The voice will sound calm and offer helpful advice. (This voice is different than the voices people with mental illnesses or severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies or hormone imbalances can experience, which might be distracting or unpleasant.)

  • Clairvoyance: Seeing intuitive guidance as images in your mind. Sometimes these images will be straightforward, like seeing the image of a friend’s face when you’re wondering whom to confide in. But the images can also appear as a metaphor, like seeing a lush landscape of dark, fertile soil and lots of vibrant green plant life when you’re pondering the future possibilities of a romantic or business relationship.

  • Claircognizance: Knowing intuitive guidance, often as aha moments or mental downloads that appear in your mind fully formed. These are thoughts that pop into your head and are often out-of-the-box solutions, not thoughts that are emotionally charged or conclusions you got to by logical deduction.

  While some of the concepts in this workbook are very mystical, they’ll become less intimidating when you approach them in a practical way. That’s really important for a grounded empath to remember.

  Explore the Four Main Psychic Pathways

  Pick one of the psychic pathways and concentrate on using it more mindfully for one week. Your intuitive system is unique, just like you, so you might find you’re naturally stronger in one or two psychic pathways—but feel free to play with them all, knowing that a new-for-you psychic pathway could open up anytime! This exercise will help you understand and develop your intuition so you can better recognize all the important self-care guidance it sends.

  • Clairvoyance: Pay attention to the images that pop into your mind but are not obviously attached to a thought, like thinking of your mom and seeing her face. To kick-start clairvoyance, meditate once a day for 10 minutes, and see what images come as your eyes are closed—or open. This is all about receiving. Let the images arrive without forcing them.

  • Claircognizance: Observe the thoughts that appear in your mind fully formed, out of the blue, as out-of-the-box solutions to problems or different angles on situations, like thinking your boss’s blistering critique of your performance is more about her own stress levels due to her challenging situation at home than it is about you. Look for fresh insight.

  • Clairaudience: Notice if you hear a calm, comforting voice in your mind that is not a thought and not your own voice. You might hear one word or full sentences. Clairaudience is probably the rarest psychic pathway to have open. For me it opened around the age of thirty and took some getting used to! If you don’t hear a voice in your mind, pay attention to the words you hear others speak, whether it’s overhearing something poignant at the grocery store or hearing a line in a movie that speaks to a challenge you’re facing. This is also intuitive guidance.

  • Clairsentience: This psychic pathway is your empath superpower! Focus on the emotional, energetic, and even physical sensations that could be coming from your intuition. Help activate or enhance clairsentience by connecting with your heart chakra. Each day, for a few minutes, find a quiet place to sit with your hand over your he
art. Notice any sensations you feel.

  Intuition is not a substitute for consulting your logical brain, experts, or past experiences in the world—but your sixth sense is an important complement to those things. So use it!

  SPECIAL SELF-CARE NEEDS OF EMPATHS

  Being an empath makes you a little different, which means your self-care practices need to be a little different too. Because you have hyper-perceptive nervous and energetic systems that pick up more easily on subtle stimuli, you are more prone to overstimulation and will need to build mindful retreat-and-recover time into your schedule.

  Retreat-and-recover time involves unplugging your nervous and energetic systems from the larger grid and doing things that are more low stimulation, where there is simply less of others’ energies and emotions to take in. Classic examples of retreat-and-recover time are reading quietly beside a partner before bed or getting lost in a solo creative project, like knitting on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Retreat-and-recover time is just one of the many empath-specific self-care practices we’ll cover in this book, but it’s an important one.

  Because energy is something you’re very sensitive to, learning how to nurture, connect with, and manage your own energy is another important self-care tool. Processing your emotions, and developing empath-friendly techniques to do so, helps you avoid getting caught up in the emotions of others. Just because you can feel other people’s emotions does not mean you are responsible for their emotions. Paying more attention to your own emotional experience helps you avoid going into that of others in an unhealthy way.

  While empaths are naturally wired to tune in to the energies and emotions around them, you can learn to mindfully tune in—or tune out—by engaging witnessing energy. We’ll look at different situations and why you might choose to tune in or out in each. Balance is the golden rule for empaths, and we’ll cover ways to cultivate more balance in all areas of your life, including creating more energetic balance in your physical home.